Omnivore
The task of a critical theory
Michael J. Thompson (William Paterson): What is Critical Theory? (and a review of Critical Theory in Critical Times: Transforming the Global Political and Economic Order, ed. Penelope Deutscher and Cristina Lafont) Rahel Jaeggi (Berlin): Crisis, Contradiction, and the Task of a Critical Theory. Steven Klein (Florida): The Power of Money: Critical Theory, Democracy, and Capitalism. Emma Jakobsson (Uppsala): How Can We Know Anything in Questions of Morality? A Critical Assessment of Rainer Forst’s
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Paper Trail
Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo talks to staff at the Washington Post, where columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance and possible murder have pushed his colleagues “into a frenzy.” “Even people who aren’t involved in the coverage are all talking about it,” said one journalist. “How’s the administration gonna respond? What does this mean for our other overseas …Syllabi
The Roots of the Alt-right
Mike WendlingDuring the last presidential election cycle, you may have read reports describing the alt-right—a loosely organized group of anti-PC, anti-feminist, race-obsessed online warriors—as a strange, newly …- Marriage Reimagined Laura Smith
- "We Are Revolution": Introducing Asia's Proletarian Lit Matt Turner
Daily Review
Strike Your Heart
No working writer believes in the shattering power of an encounter—with another person, with a new sensation, with possibility—more than Amélie Nothomb, the prolific Paris-based Belgian who’s published a novel a year since 1992’s Hygiène de l’assassin (rendered in English as Hygiene and the Assassin, though a more accurate title would be The Assassin’s Purity). … 
Interviews
Deborah Eisenberg
Over the span of thirty-two years, Deborah Eisenberg has produced five short-fiction collections, each more emotionally thoughtful and rigorous than the last. Like her past work, Eisenberg’s newest collection, Your Duck Is My Duck, requires not just a reader’s utmost attention, but also a willingness to be vulnerable and receptive. Rather than concern themselves with plot in an obvious way, the stories tend to chase abstract questions and explore how time impacts those pursuits.
…- IT IS ONE THING to write down the shameful truth of what you really think about someone …
- Every once in a while the psychoanalyst comes across certain deep beliefs in one of …
- NO WORKING WRITER believes in the shattering power of an encounter—with another person, …
- The first piece in The Souls of Yellow Folk, the collection of Wesley Yang’s journalism, …
- I've spent the past few days unpacking my library. My books are finally on the shelves, …
- Two Southern belles on the run get catcalled one too many times by the same schlubby …
- DeRay Mckesson is a frustrating figure. I don’t mean Mckesson the person, but rather …
- The concept that each American state is its own “laboratory of Democracy”—a term coined …
- Zines are pretty much over; you can tell because people are nostalgic for them. In …
- The usual thing, in book reviewing, is to start with the positive. Polite book reviewers …
- In his visionary 1985 essay “Exactitude,” the Italian writer Italo Calvino says, “The …
Reviews
Excerpt
Extralife
Jessica Hopper
Saturday was the Hold Steady video. It is a good thing not all one hundred people showed up because we had room for about thirty-three total. People later said they did not show because filming video is waiting around for twenty hours to act fake-excited in one-minute spurts.
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